It is not a coincidence that AI is now being used in increasingly inventive and diverse ways that are considerably more likely to benefit humans than to outsmart them.
These tools are now ingrained in many facets of our everyday lives, regardless of whether a person is more likely to use AI as a consumer, a business professional, or for the management of their healthcare.
The projected continuous development of AI will soon lead to a multitude of innovations that might still seem unreal to us today, but it could also increase the likelihood of more serious cybersecurity concerns and associated risks.
The Great Disruptor & Partner, AI
Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, is anticipating, among other innovations, that the industry will see the first AI-discovered and/or AI-designed drugs in late-stage trials entering the phase of efficacy validation in 2023. Insilico Medicine is an end-to-end AI-driven pharma-technology company with offices in New York, NY, and Pak Shek Kok, Hong Kong, where doctors are developing an entirely new AI-driven drug discovery pipeline. The creator and CEO of Insilico, Zhavoronkov, stated that several companies are leading the charge in the race to the clinic. “I also believe that robotics will be used in conjunction with AI drug research and development to speed up the process even further and help validate studies. On this front, Insilico Medicine is taking the lead. In January, we will launch our completely autonomous AI-run robotics lab in Suzhou, China.
In comparison to other sectors, Zhavoronkov thinks the future of medical technology in terms of AI will be rather more spectacular.
Few areas, he noted, “have the potential to profoundly improve human existence, like medicines and medical technology, while AI is disrupting many others.” Because of the lengthy timelines, high prices, and high failure rates associated with medication discovery and approval, this industry has been primed for disruption. The best way to examine and handle the industry’s billions of data points from various databases is to use machine learning tools. Many pharmaceutical corporations have already partnered with AI drug development biotechs like ours, and I anticipate that this trend will continue. I’m increasingly convinced that AI will profoundly alter how quickly and inexpensively new, life-saving medications are delivered to people.
A Future With Greater Equity?
Although Zhavoronkov asserts that he thinks AI is already making a significant contribution to the democratisation of technology, he is optimistic about the future of his business and the sector as a whole.
In Abu Dhabi, for instance, where they have been able to fast create an industry through a combination of government funding, outside investment, and public-private partnerships, he remarked, “I have seen the exponential emergence of new regional centres of technology excellence.” In areas with a high global demand but limited investment opportunity that have previously been disregarded and underfunded, it has also opened up prospects for the development of innovative medicines. The requirement for non-hormonal contraception choices is a prime example. The Gates Foundation is sponsoring businesses like Insilico Medicine so they may employ AI drug discovery to identify novel contraceptive methods for the more than 200 million women and girls in low- and middle-income countries who want to avoid pregnancy.
Embrace Greater Security As AI Develops
A degree of security that is just as revolutionary, if not more so, will continue to be a “side effect” of the incredible invention that AI continues to produce. According to Zhavoronkov, he anticipates that in the years to come, international laws and regulations pertaining to data privacy, protection, and compliance will tighten up. He also provides a few of the tactics used by his business.
As for privacy, he added, “At Insilico, we exclusively use publicly available data and employ privacy by design and by default.” “We facilitate system security by doing in-depth security analyses during each stage of development. The cloud services provided by Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure house all Insilico data hubs.
Zhavoronkov added that Insilico has a number of safeguards in place to guarantee ongoing data integrity, protection, and privacy.
He cited two examples: “For instance, customers’ data is not used in any internal environments of the platform, and a firewall is set up to isolate clients’ access from everyone else’s access.” The privacy of all data is managed in accordance with our privacy policy, and all data is encrypted.
According to Zhavoronkov, as AI becomes more intrusive for the greater good, these kinds of rigorous deliberations are also necessary to establishing and preserving public trust.
AI should be viewed as a bridge linking scientists and innovators throughout the world who are united by the same shared aim – to improve and extend human life, he added. “AI drug discovery is genuinely a global, collaborative effort,” he said. “We’ll be better able to handle any issues that arise the more knowledge we pool from pharma, government, academia, and business. To reassure the public about AI’s role in producing and delivering new medications, I believe it is crucial to provide a continual stream of information that explains the procedure and the science. The need of rigorous drug safety testing cannot be overstated. Whether or not pharmaceuticals were created by AI or created in a robotics lab controlled by AI, they still need to pass several steps of testing on animals and humans before being licenced. The key distinction is that these medications can be created more quickly, more affordably, and with a higher chance of effectiveness.
Robots are the next step in AI drug discovery
A robotics lab operated by AI is being established by Insilico Medicine, and it is planned to be completely operational by 2023. It will be operated remotely by an AI system with autonomous guided cars doing trials in place of human scientists. It is being touted as a real-world networked expansion of the company’s end-to-end AI-driven drug development platform.
